Where earth and sky meet

When I took this shot I looked up information on Stratfield Mortimer, and discovered there a number of Bronze Age barrows at the other end of the village. It turns out we used  to frequently walk the dogs within 50 yards of them, but had never known they were there! (In our defence, there were two rows of trees and a road between us and them.)

Today, taking Vinnie along for a walk, I went to have a look at them. They're quite impressive, still quite distinctly visible, with a group of them laid out in what was probably a burial complex. (There are apparently a few more scattered through the woods, but there was timber work going on so I couldn't easily get to them.)

I'm less than impressed, though, at how they've been treated recently.This is the first one you reach coming into the site from the road. The black "scar" on the front is heavily chewed up mud, with a few fragmentary tyre tracks visible - most likely scrambling on motor bikes, though from the scale of the damage it was could almost have been someone taking a 4x4 up there! Hopefully that was a one-off rather than a regular occurrence.

I took a few pictures, and I really want to go back there and spend some more time trying to capture the atmosphere. From today's visit, I like this shot best because of the way the pattern of clouds seems to echo the path leading to the tumulus.